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As actor Parvathy Thiruvothu joins us over a call from London, where she’s shooting for a “film that shall not be named”, it becomes clear that this interview is going to traverse three languages. While Malayalam and English may be obvious, she sneaks in a sentence or two in Hindi as she speaks to a cab driver as she figures her way to a small Chinese place a friend recommended.
“I need my spicy food!” she says animatedly as her shoot breaks for lunch.
In this part of the world, though, celebrations are on for her Malayalam film Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar, arguably the only hit to weather the Bethlehem Kudumba Unit storm. The film has so far grossed Rs.50 crore, and it appears to be going strong.
With obvious amounts of FOMO in her voice, she goes back to days of the PDK’s shoot and a character she found “most challenging”.
Edited excerpts:
Your career began 20 years ago, and that’s a really long time. But has something fundamentally changed in the way you decide to do a film?
Surprisingly, not much has changed from the beginning. When I listen to a script, if I don’t feel it in my body, it’s hardly gone to become a yes later. Most of the time, it has always been an overwhelming yes.
When Shahad narrated PDK, the only thing I said was, “We need to figure out dates.” But usually, I do reach out and ask them for a screenplay, and I look at that as me working on the next steps of the film. But when it’s a no, you feel that too just as strongly.
The biggest tell is that I would have forgotten about the film the very next day. The rare exceptions are when I’m not fully sure about the script, but there’s something about it that I’m not able to get over.
What about instances when the film changes or evolves from the screenplay you’d agreed to?
I have worked with directors who’ve gone on to change the screenplays during the course of the making. As long as it doesn’t take away from the arc of my character or the dramatic need for my character, I’m usually ok with these changes. I do not think it’s my place to tell them what’s not working. But I appreciate it when they openly tell me where we are going wrong, as long as they do not disturb my character. If they still have to make a change, then I expect them to convince me about it, just so I can dignify my character. There were several such iterations on Bangalore Days too, but I did not worry at all because I knew my character was in safe hands.
You’ve played morally dense characters like the one in Ullozhukku. But in PDK, not only is there the morality angle, but there are also the points that make the film unpredictable. Did that aspect of the screenplay make it harder to mull over?
None of the screenplays I’ve worked with has had as many twists and turns. The screenplay works along the lines of “two steps forward, one step back”, with all our doubts getting cleared in the following scene. With each scene, we walk into a new problem statement and another resolution.
At one point, I decided to give up and focus on my character alone. I felt the combination of Shahad, Chaman Chacko (the editor) and Robby (the DOP) is best at dealing with all these minute connections and the interpersonal dynamics. When so many secrets and reveals needed to be dealt with, I felt I needed to leave my logistical part of the brain aside.
Why I find your performance in PDK so special is because of the in-between situation you’re stuck in. In films like Uyare and Ullozhukku, your arc is that of a person trying to rise after a tragedy. In PDK, though, a crime has been committed, but the punishment is inching closer with each scene. That moral conundrum couldn’t have been easy to pull off...
There’s also an additional layer of Aleena, my character, having to feel empathy for Divya chechi (played by Unnimaya). I don’t think she cares for the other two officers in the same situation. She has seen enough of the world to realise that the men would get out of this somehow. This, despite the same line being said by the men in the film.
As a woman, she has lost her parents, her husband, and now she’s at the risk of losing her daughter.
Did Shahad and team have elaborate backstories for the characters?
Of course. He often said that Aleena had a complete identity for herself outside of being a police officer. He gave me a PDF document in which he’d mapped out Aleena’s age, which school she went to, the reason for that scar near her eyebrow, even though these details did not make it to the film. Even towards the end, the reason why she’s willing to give up everything is when she sees Divya getting hurt. Divya’s safety becomes her North Star.
Did all these details help you break down the character easier in your head?
I never felt confident that I could play Aleena. I knew Shahad felt confident and that I would do it. But my constant worry was that the audience would support Aleena and the other officers. They shouldn’t feel like they are supporting people who committed a crime, and for this, they needed to feel empathy for Aleena.
People who know me know that I’m not Aleena at all. I’m neither as smart nor as fierce as she is. She’s scared, and she’s lost, but as a woman, Aleena can still be a Sherlock Holmes. In one of Reese Witherspoon’s old interviews, she speaks of scenes in the movies in which women say, “Oh! What do we do now?” But she’s never seen a woman saying that in real life. That’s the same with Aleena too. She may have gotten into an issue, but she will figure a way out.
The one aspect of Aleena that makes a huge impact is her reading habit. We see very early on that she reads, but it’s when she reads the autobiography of Harris Meeran (Vijayaraghavan) that the film changes entirely…
These are details that will work even better in a second viewing. For Aleena, Harris Meeran is already a major figure in her head because Aby, Aleena’s husband, used to look up to him. Until the case against Aleena, she’s just reading Meeran’s autobiography for the strength and because of how important he was to Aby. So you can call Aby a disciple of Meeran but not Aleena. Aleena then becomes his faux pupil as a survival mechanism.
I’m not going to give out a spoiler, but what was your first reaction when you read of the film’s stunning climax?
Oh, I couldn’t react. I didn’t move. It summarises the extent to which she would go to safeguard her family. The way Shahad had narrated it, he had also emphasised certain details to the point that it hits you when you hear the ending. The ending was always the same, but we’ve gone through multiple corrections in the second half to make it tighter and trickier than before.
I also loved the Harris Meeran character. He deserves his own film series.
For sure. Meeran is a great investigator, but after a point, he’s not out here because he wants to protect the law. He just wants to win. Aleena and gang may be bending the law because they’re desperate, but Meeran is doing the same in full awareness. I should tell Shahad that he can build on a film series in which the system attacks the same people who were trusted to protect it.
Finally, the film has grossed over Rs.50 crore, and we’ve loved your performance in it. But when can we see you in a lighter film or a comedy?
I feel I’ve been inching closer. I’ve been manifesting thrillers all my life, and finally I’ve got one. I think a comedy or a romance will take another six to seven years for me to manifest because that’s how long it took for me to get a thriller.
In the movie that I cannot talk about, which begins shooting in December, there’s a lot of comedy.
Vishal Menon is a film critic and features writer.